Microsoft's Terry Myerson, corporate vice president of Windows Phone, talks about the competition. "With iPhone, I sense that it's running out of steam. With iOS, [Apple] just added a fifth row of icons. Android is... kind of a mess. Look at Samsung - there's clearly mutiny going on. The only OEM making money off of Android is Samsung." There's truth to all these statements, which makes it all the more surprising that Microsoft appears to be unable to properly capitalise on them. Sure, WP appears to be doing well in a few select markets, but by no means the kind of success Microsoft and (Nokia) was banking on. Microsoft will pull through. Nokia on the other hand...

"PC shipments dropped by 14% in the first quarter of this year...As IDC pointed out, it was the single biggest year-over-year drop since the company began tracking PC sales in 1994.

"Hidden in IDC's analysis was an unusual assertion; namely, that Windows 8 had not only not helped PC sales, but actually depressed them.

"When Win 8 came out, we bought a test machine with the new OS loaded on it, fairly confident that we'd need it for testing the inevitable batch of soon-to-arrive Metro apps. But these apps have not materialized... that Win8 test machine has been a long experiment in frustration. Microsoft's design decisions, both at the UI level and below, serve to continually get in our way... We shall shortly strip off Win8 and replace it Windows 7.

"Win8-specific apps have been a non-starter.

"the question is how fast Microsoft can fix their bet."

Pretty much matches my personal experience with the one Win 8 laptop we bought. Never again. Ug.